The subject technology generally relates to network access technology and, in particular, relates to resolving a host name to an Internet Protocol (IP) address.
When a user of a client computing device accesses a webpage, (e.g., example.com, by entering a uniform resource locator (URL) into a web browser or clicking on a link, etc.), the client computing device is directed to a content server such as example.com by resolving a host name (e.g., “example.com”) to an IP address (e.g., “1.2.3.4”) using a default domain name service (DNS) lookup server (e.g., a DNS lookup server provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP)). The IP address can be an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address. The default DNS lookup server may cover a broad range of client computing devices, resulting in suboptimal steering of requests to servers with poor geographic balancing or load balancing. For example, one server may be overloaded while another server for the same content is processing relatively few requests. Alternatively, a request from a client computing device in San Francisco to a server in Seattle may be routed via Atlanta and New York City, rather than directly from San Francisco to Seattle. As the foregoing illustrates, a new approach for resolving a host name to an IP address may be desirable.